The classroom doesn’t look like it did 20 years ago… Schools are now moving away from the classic lecture-style learning environment and are discovering effective ways to become immersive classrooms.
What is Immersive Learning?
Immersive learning is all about experiencing and exploring. Imagine learning about life in the trenches during World War 1… How much easier would it be to understand and empathize with the soldiers if you could actually travel to the trenches and experience the conditions for yourself? Now that’s immersive learning!
Immersive classrooms involve using technology to create immersive digital or artificial environments. Educators then ‘transport’ their students into the teaching topic, letting them experience and interact with the learning, instead of simply reading or hearing it. Immersive teaching in education uses different senses to transform the way students acquire and process knowledge, ensuring the classroom is an exciting, engaging and memorable place to learn. With theory on immersive learning experience growing every day, studies have shown that it offers a range of opportunities.
Benefits of Immersive Classrooms
From boosting learning quality and increasing knowledge retention by up to 75% to enhancing student learning outcomes, creating an immersive classroom has many benefits for students.
Engagement
It’s no surprise that one of the biggest advantages is engagement. With modern technology making life more distracting than ever, keeping students engaged in the classroom is a key focus for teachers. So, being able to create fully immersive classrooms can be an invaluable tool. With exciting technology, focused immersion and distraction-free lessons, teachers can grab and keep their students’ attention, every time!
Emotional connection and empathy
It’s often difficult for anyone, let alone students, to put themselves in the shoes of someone else. But immersive classrooms change that. What better way to properly understand someone, than to become them! Students can experience different people’s lives and empathize with them in ways that are just not possible with traditional teaching methods in education.
Personalized learning
With immersive learning experiences, students have the ability to explore the lesson at their own pace. While the teacher guides the lesson, the student feels in control and can focus their time and attention on the areas of learning that they need to. This means no two experiences are exactly the same and ensures no one’s left behind!
Knowledge retention
Research shows that learning through experience improves the amount of knowledge that’s retained. When trying to remember the lesson or the content, students can link back to actual experiences, instead of words on a page. Immersive teaching is memorable – it’s as simple as that!
Now that covers what immersive learning in schools is and why it’s important; but how do you creative an immersive learning experience?
Immersive Classrooms: Learning Strategies & Technologies
Educators around the world use a range of different strategies to get the most out of immersive teaching and can use a range of immersive learning technologies to deliver these strategies.
Simulation
Teachers let their students experience the lesson by placing them at the heart of it. Whether they’re exploring a volcano or stepping into Roman Britain, students can become part of the topic, and learn through experiencing the subject they’re studying with simulations.
Gamification
Teachers use games to get students interacting with the lesson. This can improve problem solving skills, team working and even boost student motivation as students forget they’re learning when playing.
Storytelling
Teachers immerse their students in the lesson by presenting the content in the form of a story. This can help make complex ideas easier to understand and encourages students to associate different concepts with the different parts of the story.
Schools worldwide are delivering these immersive learning strategies thanks to ground-breaking technology such as:
Virtual reality (VR)
This is the most well-known form of immersive learning. In VR, students are fully immersed in a digital world using VR headsets. They can travel to anywhere, at any time, including places that are completely impossible! Fancy exploring inside a leaf? Now you can! How about a journey down to the center of the earth? It’s all possible with VR!
Augmented reality (AR)
AR allows students to view the real world as normal but with digital elements augmented on top. An easily accessible technology, teachers can immerse their students in AR using headsets, tablets or even mobile phones. The AR codes allow students to hold or even see augmented 3D models jump out of the pages!
Mixed reality (MR)
As the most-progressive form of immersive learning, MR is often misunderstood. It’s a mix between VR and AR (like the name suggests) and is all about the digital world and the real world interacting with each other. In MR, the virtual world is anchored to the real world, so students can touch, change and interact with it.
These technologies are continually being developed. If you didn’t know about the metaverse already, you will soon enough. But for now, schools all over the world are implementing these immersive learning strategies and technologies into their curriculum.
Examples of Learning in Immersive Classrooms
From watching volcanoes erupt in Geography, walking on the surface of Mars in Science, to swimming with sharks to boost creative writing in Literacy, teachers across the world are delivering immersive learning with VR and AR.
Using VR solutions like ClassVR in education, teachers can transport students into impossible, impractical and unforgettable places. Whether it’s venturing out on a virtual safari, discovering algebra in famous landmarks or exploring the human body in VR, there are so many examples of immersive learning in schools!
Implementing Immersive Learning in Schools with ClassVR
If you’re looking for the perfect immersive educational VR & AR solution for your school, ClassVR is the world’s most awarded VR classroom technology – providing everything you need to implement virtual reality into your teaching. To learn more about ClassVR and see it in action for yourself, book a demonstration today.
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